While pay TV subscriber growth continued its slow decline in the first quarter, the rate of broadband subscriber additions maintained its pace during the period.

The top 17 cable and telcos, representing 94% of the market, added nearly 1.2 million net additional high-speed Internet subs in the first quarter of 2015, similar to the adds in the year-ago period, according to Leichtman Research Group (LRG).

Those providers now have 88.5 million subs, with 53 million of them coming way of cable operators.

Cable continued to dominate broadband in the U.S., with top MSOs adding more than 1 million broadband subs in Q1, accounting for 86% of broadband net adds in the period, and 104% of the net adds from the year-ago period. LRG said the top cable providers now have a 60% share of the market, hitting that mark for the first time since the second quarter of 2005.

The top telcos, meanwhile, added about 160,000 broadband subs in Q1 2015, representing 81% of the total net adds in Q1 2014. Among individual telcos, AT&T and Verizon Communications added 573,000 subs via U-verse and FiOS in Q1, and lost 463,000 DSL subs.

During the past year, top cable and telco ISPs added about 3 million net broadband subs, versus 2.7 million over the prior year.

“This was the first quarter with over a million net broadband adds for cable since 1Q 2008,” said Bruce Leichtman, president and principal analyst for LRG, in a statement.
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